RENO ORDERS INVESTIGATION OF 46 MISSISSIPPI JAIL DEATHS

WASHINGTON -- Attorney General Janet Reno has ordered an investigation of 46 hanging deaths in Mississippi jails since 1987 to determine whether there is evidence of criminal wrongdoing by authorities, Justice Department officials said on Wednesday.

Her directive evoked the era of the 1960s and 1970s, when the Justice Department's civil rights division tried to fight violence against blacks in the South by enforcing laws that dated from Reconstruction but that had not been fully applied.

"How could that many people die?" Reno said. She said the civil rights division would review each of the deaths in the past six years.

Reno also said she hoped citizens in Los Angeles would accept the verdict in the trial of four white police officers charged with violating the civil rights of Rodney King, a black motorist who was beaten after being stopped in a high-speed chase.

"When the jury speaks, it is my earnest hope that people will accept this verdict," she said.

On another topic, she said she had encouraged federal prosecutors conducting the investigation into the financial affairs of Rep. Dan Rostenkowski, D-Ill., chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee, to pursue the case "full steam ahead."

Her comments came after the department's demand for the resignations of U.S. attorneys around the country, including Jay Stephens, a former chief federal prosecutor, who said that his removal could interfere with an investigation of Rostenkowski.

In commenting on the jail deaths in Mississippi, Reno said that if no wrongdoing was uncovered, the Department would study whether the deaths indicated a pattern.

But the department later issued a clarification, saying Reno did not mean to imply that she had any specific evidence that the number of deaths indicated wrongdoing.

The deaths, of whites and blacks, drew national attention after the hanging of Andre Jones, 18, in a jail in Simpson County in south-central Mississippi.

Jones was the son of Esther Quinn, president of the Jackson chapter of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People.

At the time, local and federal officials determined that Jones had taken his own life, but a pathologist hired by his family contended that the death was a homicide.